MINSK, October 11. /TASS/. Belarus’ State Border Committee said on Monday that Polish law enforcers are shooting in the air and are using batons to force refugees into Belarus.
"Polish border guards are seeking to conceal obvious facts of the use of weapons to drive out refugees and make deliberately false statements about the sounds of shooting allegedly heard from the Belarusian side," it wrote on its Telegram channel.
According to the Belarusian State Border Committee, Belarusian border guards heard the sound of gunfire at a section of the border with Poland on October 8. When they reached the site they saw a big group of refugees near the borderline on the Polish territory who were surrounded by Polish soldiers. "In response to the refugees’ lawful demands for the right to protection, the Polish soldiers shot in the air and used batons to force them across into Belarus. The Polish border guards failed to push the refugees into Belarus only thanks to the timely arrival of Belarusian border guards," the committee said.
According to the committee, the Polish side distorts the developments at the border and "unfoundedly accused the Belarusian side in a bid to divert attention from the illegal actions by Polish law enforcers against refugees."
Polish Border Guards spokeswoman Anna Michalska said on Monday that Polish border guards had stopped illegal migrants’ attempts to cross the border by force. According to Michalska, the incidents took place on the weekend when big groups of illegal migrants consisting of 90 and 130 people destroyed fences and came down on Polish soldiers trying to cross the border.
Some of them, in her words, managed to penetrate Poland’s territory but were soon returned to the borderline.
She recalled that some 2,500 servicemen were deployed to the border. "But we plan to increase their number. We will increase the number of patrols," she said.
She said earlier that a Belarusian border patrol had allegedly opened fire at Polish soldiers at the border. Minsk however refutes these reports.
More than 16,000 migrants have reportedly tried to illegally cross into Poland from Belarus since August. Most of the attempts were stopped by border guards. More than 1,800 illegal migrants have been detained and placed in special centers in Poland. According to the Polish authorities, around 50 of them are linked with terrorist organizations and criminal groups and pose a threat to the country. Warsaw places responsibility for the situation on Belarus, which, as the Polish side claims, receives migrants and then sends them across the border to Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia, seeking to provoke a migration crisis in Europe.
Meanwhile, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said in late May that his country had served as a barrier to the flows of illegal migrants to the European Union but, given the current ramped-up Western political pressure against Belarus, Minsk warned that it could stop performing this function.